It started with Blondie, and ended up as a Zoo with a crew!

Tag Archives: sports

For the past decade I’ve spent every Spring (except for one) on the baseball field. I love to see my boys in their little uniforms- cleats, belts, baseball caps, chewing gum in the dugout, wearing the wrong socks…

When Dyl Pickles was little I took being a player’s mom very seriously! “Eye on the ball” I would shout, or “level swing” I would say.

Holy moly the Tigers managed to make it to the playoffs! Looks like we can hold back the “it’s her last football game” tears for a few more days! Which is a good thing, because there is no time for crying around here.

This week we had a Veteran’s Day program to get through. It was beautifully done. They combined all the schools together in Tiger Stadium this year and all the kids took part. It was awesome to see every kid in our school district take part in celebrating our veteran’s and it was even nicer for me because for years I’ve tried to bounce from campus to campus to catch all the programs. Sometimes I didn’t get to make all of them. But this way I got to see all the kids in one place, and Blondie sang a beautiful song she wrote. I would post a video, but my hands were shaking terribly and it would make you sea-sick to watch it, so just take my word for it, she made grown men cry! Which is a good thing, because I’ve shed too many tears on my own this year. Read the rest of this entry →

It was bound to happen! For nearly ten years I have returned every spring to the same spot, where the same corner of earth welcomes me to watch the well beaten paths created by little boys in cleets. I have lost a windshield to a homerun there. I’ve been hit in the stomach by a foul ball that left a deep purple bruise that hung out with me for weeks. I’ve witnessed home runs and victories and the moment when the game was lost by 1 point, which for the record is the worst kind of defeat! However, in all my years of being a baseball mom, I have never left the Little League field en route to the emergency room, until last night!

That’s not to say I’m not a member of the ER Frequent Flyer Club, because indeed, I’ve had my share of visits. My dad used to joke that he was going to reserve me my own department in the ER. (Those jokes backfired, just a little….) And although my kids aren’t quite the train wreck I was, they’ve made the trip a few times. I once got a call that Blondie had fallen off the steps by the gym and had likely fractured a bone. Which bone? Oh yeah, it was her tailbone. (The zoo crew still jokes that Blondie broke her booty!) She ate it up that she got to spend the rest of the school year sitting on her baby-brother’s Boppy pillow (it was the closest thing I could find around the house that compared to a doughnut). Another time the athletic trainer called to say my son was immobile on the football field. I got to drive my Yukon right onto the field, which made me the hero to the seventh grade boys athletics class and ticked the maintenance man off so bad he still looks at me funny.